Dearly Beloved (Are You Listening?)
by followthewererabbit
Summary: Johnny is back in his hometown after having a taste of what it was like to live in a new city filled with drugs, lust and chaos. It's been months since the death of Saint Jimmy, and just as long since he has seen his friend Will. When Johnny meets Will again he is prepared for a calm night, but what they come to find is nothing like what they had ever expected.


Johnny was laying sprawled out on his bed, staring outside the window as rain fell gently against the glass pane. His room was a mess as usual; a mix of clothes, crumpled up paper and empty beer bottles scattered across the floor. His acoustic guitar was laying idle and out of tune next to his bed as though he hadn't touched it for quite a while.

It was a dreary, shitty Friday evening and he couldn't stop thinking about the experiences he'd had when he'd left Jingletown. Though it had hurt him quite a bit to lose the girl of his dreams, there was another friend he'd lost through all the chaos that continued to haunt him the most. A drug addict whom he had both loved and hated all at once. Johnny's life style had gotten out of control as soon as he'd met him, and as much fun as it was while it lasted, it had also quickly become a nightmare.

Images of the last time he'd seen him quickly passed through his mind. He could still hear the argument that the two of them had about how much the hard drug abuse had gotten out of hand and ruined Johnny's way of thinking, as well as his entire life…

. . . . . .

 _"I'm done with this, Jimmy. I'm fucking done with this." He watched as Jimmy's stare went cold, his blue eyes piercing with rage as he leaned forward, millimeters from Johnny's face as his fists clenched and his knuckles turned white._

 _"_ _Fuck you. You can't fuckin' abandon me for this white picket fence American dream shit."_

 _Johnny threw his arms up, angry tears welling up in his eyes. "I have nothing left. I lost her…Ever since the day I met you, you've made my life into a shitty train wreck. I don't want anything to do with you anymore."_

 _Jimmy pushed him away from himself as hard as he could, while simultaneously pushing away every bit of feeling he had developed for him. He had always so easily crossed over the line from love to hate, and this time wasn't any harder. He was getting more used to this._

 _"_ _You don't know the meaning of having nothing left."_

 _Johnny glared back at Jimmy after having staggered back a few steps, a stronger surge of rage rushing through him as he came forward again and shoved Jimmy in return._

 _"Fuck you!"_

 _Jimmy couldn't stand to look at Johnny anymore, and kept his eyes to the ground as he regained his footing._

 _"_ _Alright," Jimmy said as he turned away from him this time, his voice softening with surrender and hopelessness. "I won't be a burden on your life anymore."_

 _Jimmy walked away from Johnny as the silence and space between them grew. He ascended a nearby stairway that led to the roof of a building and Johnny turned the opposite direction, storming off and muttering under his breath._

 _'Good fucking riddance,' he thought._

 _. . . . . . . . . ._

Johnny pushed the memory from his head now, unable to relive what came next, but he could still hear how loud that gunshot was that nearly broke the ground beneath him.

As his hand began to shake, he slowly raised it to his face with his palm resting over his eyes and sighed an unsteady, anxious breath. It felt like he was going to be sick.

'I need to get out of the house…'

Johnny shifted up onto his bed and fished a pair of jeans out from one of his clothes piles laying in the floor. He pulled them on over his boxers and hastily walked out of his bedroom and out of the front door into the pouring rain. It didn't matter that he had no real destination in mind. It didn't matter that he'd forgotten to grab a hoodie or a jacket to avoid getting soaked. All that mattered was finding some way to escape his own mind for a while.

He walked quickly down the sidewalk, keeping his eyes low to the ground. Maybe he'd go to the liquor store and grab some whiskey. Maybe if he drank enough, he wouldn't be able to think anymore and he'd start to forget it all like a bad dream.

Although no matter how much he wanted to forget, it was never that easy. It was so much easier to blame himself for what happened. To blame himself for the death of his friend. No matter how angry he'd been with Jimmy, he could have just left the city without a word and never contributed to pushing him to the breaking point of suicide. Then, maybe things would have turned out differently. Maybe he shouldn't have even tried to leave home in the first place.

Johnny blinked as the tires of a car screeched to a halt in front of him. He had apparently been walking in a daze to cross the street without looking at the traffic light at the crosswalk. The car blared its horn at him loudly.

He simply flipped the driver the bird and continued walking to the other side of the street, slipping inside of the liquor store as planned. He looked around for any kind of cheap alcohol that would do the job. Just then, he felt a buzz in his pocket and pulled out his phone to see who was trying to contact him.  
It was one of his oldest friends that he hadn't spoken to for a long time, Will.

Unlocking his phone screen, he held the phone up to his ear and grabbed a bottle of whiskey.

"Hey."

"Hey. How have you been doing? Are you alright? I haven't heard from you in a while…"

"Yeah…Sorry, man…I guess I'm just kind of…I don't really know. I feel like a fucking zombie these days, ya know?"

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Can you meet me by the bridge? I feel like getting out could do us both some good."

"Alright. I'm at the liquor store right now. Do you want me to bring you anything?"

"I could use a beer, but whatever you want is fine."

"Okay. I'll see you soon, man."

"Alright," Will replied as he hung up on his end and waited. He was never good with proper goodbyes.

Johnny shoved his phone back into his pocket and checked out at the cash register. He carried the alcohol in a brown paper bag and walked down toward the bridge, his body shivering slightly from the wet rain.

It had been about a month since he'd hung out with Will or Tunny. Both of them seemed to have had a lot happen in their lives as well and things were different now. Tunny had mellowed out since he'd been to war and married his new wife. Will had a lot of drama going on between his ex and the child they'd had together. No one really wanted to just let loose and party anymore. It was all about serious shit now and Johnny didn't like it. He couldn't help but miss the old days and yet back then, he didn't ever seem to appreciate them enough.

Approaching the bridge, it was hard to see much apart from the repeated cycle of headlights illuminating the sides of the bridge and darkening it again as they passed by. As Johnny got closer to the middle of the bridge, he saw Will standing there, making an attempt to light a cigarette without it getting wet, but not succeeding very well.

Will was wearing a dark hoodie over his head in a half-assed attempt to keep his curly brown hair from getting soaked. His black skinny jeans and old, worn converse did little to keep him dry, but he didn't seem to mind much. He looked over at Johnny as he heard his footsteps, and smiled a familiar smile, giving him a friendly hug as soon as he could.

"Hey!" Will let go of Johnny and looked at him in relief, "It's been too fucking long, man. It's good to finally see you again."

As another car passed and lit up his face, Will was still smiling but Johnny could see that there was still a lot of sleeplessness and stress circling his old friend's soft caramel eyes.

"It's good to see you too, man," Johnny replied, patting Will's shoulder and offering him his beer. "Are you holding up okay?"

"Thanks," Will took the beer and opened it, hesitating a few seconds before answering. "I guess so…I'm doing as well as I can."

"I'm sorry…" Johnny replied, a bit of guilt residing in his voice as though he regretted asking.

"Yeah..." Will let his voice trail off and seemed to avoid that subject. "Do you wanna go get some take-out? I'm starving."

"Sure.."

Johnny pulled the whiskey from his bag and drank a swig of it, not seeming to care if anyone caught him drinking it in public or not. He stuffed it back into the bag and started walking away from the bridge.

Will followed behind him, not too close but not too far. "Lead the way."

Johnny seemed to go quiet for a bit as they walked. He was zoning out again, his facial expression seeming to show distress and emptiness.

Will seemed to notice the silence and made an effort to catch up a little more. "Are you okay? You don't seem like yourself."

"I just can't stop thinking about…Forget it. It's nothing."

"What is it? Tell me."

"..I can't stop blaming myself for what happened to Jimmy…"

Will laid his arm around Johnny's shoulders comfortingly. "It's not your fault. You can't blame yourself for things like that. He obviously had a lot of problems that no one knew about, and when things built up he decided to take the easy way out. That was his choice, no one made him do that."

"But I sought him out, Will. I stood there blaming him for all the shit that happened to me. I'm sure he had plenty of other people he knew so it's not like he and I were so close…but…I feel like I pushed him over the edge that day…"

"But you still didn't know that he was going to go so far, or anything else that was troubling him. It's-"

Will was interrupted by squealing tires and the chaos of people yelling as some got out of their cars, a crash big enough to block half of the road just ahead. He looked at Johnny, unsure whether they should help or run from the scene.

Johnny looked back at Will. "What the hell was that?"

"I don't know…should we check it out?"

"…Yeah, I guess we should.."

Will hurried toward the crash to see what was going on, when he saw a silhouette of someone running away from the crash. A dark figure that looked like someone with a hood over their head, limping away as fast as they could even though they seemed to be in pain. "Did you see that, Johnny?"

Johnny was studying the figure carefully and just then something urged him to bolt forward. He was running on impulse around crowds and traffic after the person without even knowing why, it was just a feeling in his gut that told him he had to see who it was that had slipped away from the accident.

Will followed closely behind him as the figure ran harder to try and get away from them. The silhouette moved quickly around a building and through an alleyway. It ran to the end of the alley and had no other place to run. Will smiled as he thought for a second that they would catch the silhouette, but it narrowly escaped up a ladder and onto a rooftop nearby. As Johnny and Will grabbed onto the edge of the building to climb up, they saw that their hands were covered in red. The two of them stared in shock for a second before climbing onto the roof. The figure was now a collapsed mound of darkness with a trail of blood leading up to them like a wounded animal.

Johnny cautiously made his way with Will over to the figure. "Hey…Should I call an ambulance? Are you okay, man…?"

The figure moved slightly and then jumped up again, staggering back away from them and causing his hood to fall off in his hurry, wiping blood from his forehead and looking at them quizzically for a long few seconds. Johnny recognized those piercing blue eyes immediately, and the harsh black hair whose spikes had fallen down into his face with the weight of the rain. But, Will broke his thoughts with more questions.

"Are you okay? You look like you're losing a lot of blood. Why did you run away, anyway?"

"Wait a second…" Johnny started, trying to get a bit of a closer look at the stranger's face. "Haven't we….Don't I know you…?" Johnny's confusion caused Will to go quiet, curious to know what the response would be.

The stranger stared back at him a bit, almost like he was starting to recognize him too. His voice was soft and a little cracked here and there, but it still held intensity and emotion in every word. It was unmistakable, especially to Johnny.

"I'm Saint Jimmy…don't you remember me?"


End file.
